Marcus "MajorLinux" SummersIf there are still no policies in place to help those being displaced by these tools, we should not be incorporating them in our everyday work!
YouTube is offering employees buyouts as part of an AI-focused reorganization
The-14What the US$55 billion Electronic Arts takeover means for video game workers and the industry
#ElectronicArts #EA #EATakeover #Buyouts #PrivateEquity #SaudiInvestment #PIF #SilverLake #Layoffs #TechIndustry #Consolidation #Monopoly #VideoGamesIndustry
https://the-14.com/what-the-us55-billion-electronic-arts-takeover-means-for-video-game-workers-and-the-industry/
#ElectronicArts #EA #EATakeover #Buyouts #PrivateEquity #SaudiInvestment #PIF #SilverLake #Layoffs #TechIndustry #Consolidation #Monopoly #VideoGamesIndustry
https://the-14.com/what-the-us55-billion-electronic-arts-takeover-means-for-video-game-workers-and-the-industry/
Houston Public MediaAs hundreds of city workers await pension payments more than four months after retiring, the chair of the city’s independent pension system faced questions from the Houston City Council.
#CityOfHouston #Houston #HoustonMayor #Local #News #Buyouts #CityOfHoustonWorkers #EarlyRetirement #HoustonCityCouncil #HoustonMunicipalEmployeesPensionSystem
Houston City Council questions pension chairperson as municipal retirees await payments
Of about 1,000 city workers who retired in May as part of a buyout program, up to 349 still haven’t received regular pension payments. The president of the city’s independent pension system says “a lot” of them didn’t submit the proper paperwork in a timely manner.
Hundreds of Houston municipal employees who accepted retirement buyouts in the spring still haven’t been paid, nearly four months later. Mayor John Whitmire says the process will complete next week.
#CityOfHouston #Houston #HoustonMayor #Local #News #Buyouts #CityOfHoustonEmployees #EarlyRetirement #HoustonMayorJohnWhitmire #HoustonMunicipalEmployeesPensionSystem
Delayed buyout payments to 500 City of Houston retirees should be resolved next week, mayor says
Hundreds of municipal employees who accepted retirement buyouts in the spring still haven’t been paid, nearly four months later. Mayor John Whitmire says the process will complete next week.
Rob PegoraroThe waning Washington Post
Saturday’s copy of the Washington Post could not have made much of a thump whenever it landed on our front walk this morning. At two sections and 36 pages, it was a sadly diminished descendant of what has been the thinnest daily edition of the paper for as long as I can remember, even before I started work there in December of 1993.
(Back then, average weekday print circulation had just peaked at 832,332; as of June, it reportedly stood at 97,000. The Post’s digital subscriptions hit a high mark of 3 million in January of 2021 and had fallen to 2.5 million by late October.)
In addition to having separate A, Metro, Sports and Style sections compressed into those two sections, part of a cutback to the print edition made in June, Saturday’s paper was also absent many familiar, favorite bylines–the result of a disturbing exodus of talent from my former employer.
Even after more than two decades of seeing buyouts encourage dozens of the Post’s more experienced journalists to head for the exits, the numbers and the names of Posties taking a buyout this time are shocking. Among the dozens hitting the ejection seat:
- Philip Bump, a hard-working explainer of policy and politics whom you can count on to bring data;
- David Von Drehle, a brilliant writer whom the Post lost once to Time and then reclaimed;
- Catherine Rampell, one of the smartest observers of economic policy on the op-ed page and anywhere;
- Joel Achenbach, a veteran science scribe whose stories were a mandatory read, but espcially his stories about space;
- Dan Steinberg, who captured the frequent pain of life as a D.C. sports fan like nobody else in Sports;
- Monica Norton, one of my best editors in Financial;
- Sally Jenkins, a generational talent of a sports columnist;
- Erik Wemple, a media critic unwilling to buy the industry’s bullshit who eventually saw the Post’s new management spike one of his columns.
It’s a horrible hollowing out even before you count the Post journalists who jumped before they could be pushed. See, for example, humor writer Alexandra Petri, whom The Atlantic was smart enough to poach and who has been joined by enough other Post refugees that the paper might as well now be that magazine’s farm team.
The Nats have never had a fire sale like this, and the Post isn’t even getting prospects in return–just personnel expenses saved, with the buyout packages paid via the paper’s miraculously overfunded pension fund.
The better comparison is not to our home team but to an out-of-town squad that won’t leave Washington: Elon Musk’s DOGE minions, who might have struggled to do this much damage to the Post if they had commandeered an office at 1301 K Street NW.
I have not yet canceled our subscription because the Post continues to do good and useful work, especially at the national and international level. But its local coverage has shrunk to the point of often becoming borderline useless, leaving me to piece together a replacement for it by reading the likes of WAMU, Greater Greater Washington, ArlNow, The 51st and the Virginia Mercury.
The proximate cause for this destruction of journalistic value is the new crop of management led by CEO and publisher Will Lewis, a Fleet Street import with a record of questionable journalistic ethics in London who has shown himself to be a newsroom cancer since his arrival two winters ago.
But Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos hired Lewis and has yet to fire him. Bezos spiked the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris two weeks before the election, had the paper insult the intelligence of its readers with its explanation (followed by more than 300,000 of them canceling their digital subscriptions), and then spent millions to curry favor with President Trump. Bezos directed the opinions section to become a defender of “personal liberties and free markets” and has since seen some of that section’s better advocates of those things leave even as hacks like Marc Thiessen remain.
Bezos has, however, yet to interfere with the paper’s news coverage–which would be my own subscription-canceling moment.
This is much worse than what I thought might happen when Bezos stunned D.C. with his $250 million purchase of the Post in 2013, and it is an even steeper drop from how things seemed to have progressed a decade ago. My journalistic alma mater now seems trapped in the grip of a billionaire with no need to sell such a trivial asset but also no interest in investing to improve it.
That may be fine financially for Bezos and his other businesses, many of which are heavily exposed to Trump’s uninformed whims. But if this is how he leaves the Washington Post, there should be no amount of packages shipped, data centers built, or rockets launched that will erase this stain from his record.
#1301KStreet #BezosWashingtonPost #buyouts #DOGE #JeffBezos #LocalNews #newspaper #wapo #WashPost #washingtonPost #WillLewis
Benjamin Carr, Ph.D. 👨🏻💻🧬#NASA begins push to slash workforce with more staff #buyouts, early retirements as budget cuts loom
June 9 memo lays out what personnel can do, including buyouts, early retirements, and deferred resignations. For the latter, employees would be able to stop working within two weeks, but still get paid through the end of the year,.
Trump budget aims to reduce NASA's overall budget by 24% and its workforce from its current 17,391 employees down to 11,853, a 32% reduction.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/nasa-begins-push-to-slash-workforce-with-more-staff-buyouts-early-retirements-as-budget-cuts-loom
June 9 memo lays out what personnel can do, including buyouts, early retirements, and deferred resignations. For the latter, employees would be able to stop working within two weeks, but still get paid through the end of the year,.
Trump budget aims to reduce NASA's overall budget by 24% and its workforce from its current 17,391 employees down to 11,853, a 32% reduction.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/nasa-begins-push-to-slash-workforce-with-more-staff-buyouts-early-retirements-as-budget-cuts-loom
ResearchBuzz: FirehoseAssociated Press: Google offers buyouts to more workers amid AI-driven tech upheaval and antitrust uncertainty. “Google has offered buyouts to another swath of its workforce across several key divisions in a fresh round of cost cutting coming ahead of a court decision that could order a breakup of its internet empire. The Mountain View, California, company confirmed the streamlining that was […]
PUPUWEB Blog🚨 Google offers voluntary buyouts to US staff across multiple divisions, including core search and ads teams. Major restructuring underway at the tech giant. #Google #TechLayoffs #Buyouts #GoogleSearch #TechNews #SiliconValley #Alphabet #TechJobs #Restructuring
Jerry MouseThe End of Taylor's Versions? @[email protected] Could Reclaim Her Original Catalogue
The investment fund that purchased her masters from Scooter Braun wants to sell them.
Taylor Swift has provided the industry with a valuable lesson: one cannot conduct business behind the backs of artists, let alone against them. Six years after the controversy began, everything may return to how it once was. If the singer regains her original catalogue, will it mark the end of the Taylor's Versions?
Will she continue with the re-recordings if she manages to reclaim the original masters? So far, Swift has released new versions of Fearless, Red, Speak Now, 1989, and Reputation, all to great success. However, if she acquires the rights to the originals, she may choose to halt the project or take a new direction.
According to sources close to the singer, there is a real possibility that the dispute over the rights to her early recordings could result in her regaining control of the original masters of her first six albums—the very ones that sparked her re-recording project known as Taylor’s Version.
The controversy began in 2019 when music executive Scooter Braun acquired Big Machine Label Group, the record label with which Swift signed at the age of 15. This deal, valued at over $300 million, included the rights to the albums Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and Reputation. The singer publicly claimed that she was not given the opportunity to purchase her recordings before the sale was finalised.
In response, Swift embarked on an unprecedented strategy: she urged her audience not to consume her original works and re-recorded her albums to regain artistic and financial control over her creations. This initiative not only proved to be a commercial success but also became a symbol of resistance against industry practices that limit artists' rights over their own work.
Now, six years later, the landscape could change dramatically. Shamrock Capital, the investment firm that purchased the masters from Braun in 2020, is reportedly willing to sell them again. What is most surprising is that Braun himself is reportedly facilitating this potential transaction, despite being at the centre of the controversy at the time.
If the deal goes through, Swift could reclaim the rights to her original recordings for a sum ranging between $600 million and $1 billion. This move would not only solidify her position as one of the most powerful figures in the industry but also enable her to maximise her royalty earnings.
For now, negotiations are ongoing, and the outcome may be revealed in the coming months. What is clear is that Taylor Swift continues to redefine the rules of the game, not only with her music but also through her steadfast advocacy for artists' rights.
@TaylorSwiftGroup, @TaylorSwiftGroup
#TaylorSwift #Songs #Music #MusicNews #MusicAlbums #buyouts
The investment fund that purchased her masters from Scooter Braun wants to sell them.
Taylor Swift has provided the industry with a valuable lesson: one cannot conduct business behind the backs of artists, let alone against them. Six years after the controversy began, everything may return to how it once was. If the singer regains her original catalogue, will it mark the end of the Taylor's Versions?
Will she continue with the re-recordings if she manages to reclaim the original masters? So far, Swift has released new versions of Fearless, Red, Speak Now, 1989, and Reputation, all to great success. However, if she acquires the rights to the originals, she may choose to halt the project or take a new direction.
According to sources close to the singer, there is a real possibility that the dispute over the rights to her early recordings could result in her regaining control of the original masters of her first six albums—the very ones that sparked her re-recording project known as Taylor’s Version.
The controversy began in 2019 when music executive Scooter Braun acquired Big Machine Label Group, the record label with which Swift signed at the age of 15. This deal, valued at over $300 million, included the rights to the albums Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and Reputation. The singer publicly claimed that she was not given the opportunity to purchase her recordings before the sale was finalised.
In response, Swift embarked on an unprecedented strategy: she urged her audience not to consume her original works and re-recorded her albums to regain artistic and financial control over her creations. This initiative not only proved to be a commercial success but also became a symbol of resistance against industry practices that limit artists' rights over their own work.
Now, six years later, the landscape could change dramatically. Shamrock Capital, the investment firm that purchased the masters from Braun in 2020, is reportedly willing to sell them again. What is most surprising is that Braun himself is reportedly facilitating this potential transaction, despite being at the centre of the controversy at the time.
If the deal goes through, Swift could reclaim the rights to her original recordings for a sum ranging between $600 million and $1 billion. This move would not only solidify her position as one of the most powerful figures in the industry but also enable her to maximise her royalty earnings.
For now, negotiations are ongoing, and the outcome may be revealed in the coming months. What is clear is that Taylor Swift continues to redefine the rules of the game, not only with her music but also through her steadfast advocacy for artists' rights.
@TaylorSwiftGroup, @TaylorSwiftGroup
#TaylorSwift #Songs #Music #MusicNews #MusicAlbums #buyouts
Democracy Matters 
Important Note for Federal Civil Servants
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/important-note-for-federal-civil-servants
